Sustainable City Project: Chicago Food Deserts

There is no one solution to deleting food deserts from our city. But there is a nonprofit that has committed the last decade to trying. Growing Home is a Chicago organization that has four organic gardens in neighborhoods considered to be food deserts.

For their part, Growing Home contributes to the fight against food deserts in multiple ways: first, they are pioneers of the Chicago community gardening movement, improving the environment through their four gardens; second, they have a CSA program as well as a weekly farmer’s market booth in neighborhoods in or near food deserts, so that the individuals have access to local organic food at a low cost; and last, they use organic urban agriculture as a job training method, taking on interns from disadvantaged neighborhoods for each of their four gardens. 

Growing Home is trying to snuff Chicago food deserts by going to the source—providing individuals and communities with equal opportunities of access to resources like fresh food and job training, all in the name of helping the local environment.

Mossbarger and Tolbert, in their 2009 study of Chicago’s digital performance.

Apply this quote to food deserts, replacing “participation online” with “access to healthy foods”, and you’ll see so many similarities.

The first photo shows the areas of Chicago that are known food deserts. The second shows the digital divide in Chicago.

Notice anything unusual?

What exactly are food deserts? 

Food deserts are defined as areas without “access to grocery stores, farmers markets or other venders selling quality, affordable food” (Huffington Post). The current food desert population is said to be almost 400,000, down from almost 700,000 in 2006, with 1/3 of that being children.  These individuals and families, predominately African American, have no access to fresh produce, meats, dairy, or grains, all necessary for a healthy diet. Instead, these neighborhoods are dependent on corner stores and fast food restaurants that carry mostly high fat, high sugar, packaged, and processed foods (Huffington Post). In most food desserts access to fast food restaurants and convenience stores are much easier than grocery stores, making processed, unhealthy foods much more accessible and affordable than fresh foods.  

Food deserts in Chicago are more prominent than most residents think. According to a report from Fox Chicago grocery stores in the Chicago area are very unevenly distributed. There are nearly two dozen grocery stores in the Lakeview and Lincoln Park neighborhoods, but head west or south and this number drops dramatically. For residents of these neighborhoods getting fresh, nutritional groceries isn’t an easy task. Instead they choose to save time and run across the street to a fast food restaurant or convenience store to get a quick, fatty meal.   

Most residents of food deserts do not try and go out of their way to find healthier food options until health problems have already surfaced. 

Check out this video summary of Jamais Cascio’s research. It’s pretty disturbing how many cheeseburgers an average American eats, but its even more disturbing how all those burgers affect the environment. Imagine the carbon footprint of a food desert where there aren’t many other options for a low-income family dinner other than a fast food cheeseburger.  

(Source: openthefuture.com)

Check out Mari Gallagher’s latest 2011 report for all the latest facts about Food Deserts in Chicago.

Stockbox Grocers is a miniature grocery that is tucked inside a reclaimed shipping container and placed into the parking lot of an existing business or organization.  The stores are designed to offer the essential grocery items and fresh produce to communities that don’t currently have access to good food.  Imagine dozens of these stores, located throughout urban food deserts and within walking distance of home, work, and school – so that there’s always good food, where you need it.

Architecture for Humanity Chicago partnered with Chicago based nonprofit Food Desert Action to design Fresh Moves Mobile Market–a one-aisle grocery store on wheels, built in a retrofitted Chicago Transit Authority bus. (Click here to watch a great video of the bus being retrofitted.) 

(Source: publicinterestdesign.org)

Mayor Emanuel targeted 2015 as the year by which to reduce Food Deserts in Chicago by 200,000 people and to fully eliminate it by 2020. Mari Gallagher, however, thinks it can and should be eliminated all together by 2015. 

“In food deserts, large grocery stores are scarce. But these same communities have plenty of corner stores. That’s usually seen as a problem because corner stores often stock more junk food than fresh produce. There are new public health programs underway in several Chicago neighborhoods and inner-ring suburbs. The idea is to turn corner stores into healthy assets.”

Click here to read more!

2011 Food Desert boundaries on major streets. 

Five year statistics breakdown in Chicago Food Deserts

Mari Gallagher’s 2011 [PDF] report indicates that over the past five years the number of Chicagoans living in food deserts has declined by almost 40 percent. Gallagher, however, still thinks the city has “a long way to go.”

(Source: The Huffington Post)

Closest grocery store in 59 miles, but chances are you will run into a McDonalds within 2 miles.